Workshops and research projects will engage ACM faculty from wide-ranging disciplines – psychology, environmental studies, economics, and religion, to name a few – through grants awarded recently by the ACM Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) Project.
Six grants, totaling $43,575, will support collaborative research by faculty and students, collaborative events for faculty, and opportunities for faculty to disseminate the results of FaCE-funded projects to national audiences. Two additional grant proposals for this funding cycle are being revised and may still receive funding.
| ACM Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) Project |
| Final deadline for proposals: April 1 |
| Presentation Grant deadlines: February 1 and April 1 |
The FaCE Project, supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is designed to strengthen curriculum, teaching, and student learning outcomes at ACM colleges, and to provide innovative, effective models for teaching that can be used throughout the higher education community.
ACM has partnered with the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College to produce the ACM-FaCE website, which disseminates the results of FaCE-funded research collaborations and events.
Over the past three years, projects supported by FaCE have involved a broad array of academic disciplines and pedagogical approaches, and this most recent set of grants continues the pattern.
Two of the projects will use fresh models of faculty-student collaboration to produce sound research results. In one, psychology faculty and students will take a scientific approach to examining forgiveness and health, and in the other, students and faculty will work together to develop digital resources for studying Zen Buddhism.
International collaboration is at the center of one of the projects, which will bring together environmental studies faculty from ACM colleges and two Brazilian universities – the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), and the University of Brasília (UnB) – for a three-day workshop. UFJF and UnB are ACM’s partners in the Brazil: Semester Exchange Programs, which include an environmental studies option offering scholarships supported by the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Second Education (FIPSE).
In another FaCE-sponsored gathering, faculty in economics and related fields will convene for a conference to focus on ways that the subjects of innovation and entrepreneurship can be more fully integrated into the undergraduate economics curriculum.
Two of the awards are Presentation Grants, a new category of grants that enable faculty who have received FaCE grants in the past three years to share the results of their projects – research findings, new curricular ideas, insights gained, and lessons learned – at national conferences and forums.
The FaCE Project is entering its final year and will conclude with an ACM-wide conference in fall 2011. During the second phase of FaCE, which began in 2008, 39 grants for a total of nearly $320,000 have been awarded through six competitive funding cycles. In most cases, groups of faculty from several ACM colleges have worked together on the proposals and the resulting projects, underlining FaCE’s focus on fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across ACM campuses.
The deadline for project proposals for the last funding cycle is April 1, 2011. Faculty who have received FaCE grants during Phase II of the project may apply for Presentation Grants at either of two deadlines: February 1, 2011 or April 1, 2011.
The six projects that received FaCE grants during the Fall 2010 funding cycle are listed below. See the FaCE webpage for more information about these and other FaCE activities.
Approaches to Research and Learning about the Environment
- Collaborative Event. Grant amount: Up to $15,000
- Mike Taber (Education, Colorado College), Nick Gomersall (Economics, Luther College), and Fabio Roland (Environmental Studies, Federal University of Juiz de Fora)
More than a dozen faculty will take part in this workshop in Juiz de Fora, Brazil, to make plans to collaborate on environmental research and develop innovative, inquiry-based course materials for students.
A Collaborative Scholarship Model for Liberal Arts Colleges: Applications for the Psychology of Forgiveness
- Collaborative Research. Grant amount: Up to $4,000
- Asani Seawell (Psychology, Grinnell College) and Loren Toussaint (Psychology, Luther College)
Developing a model of collaborative student-faculty research, Seawell and Toussaint will pursue their research interests in forgiveness and health and demonstrate the ways in which research at small liberal arts colleges can be successfully accomplished.
How Useful Is Digital Field Technology in a Standard 3-Hour Lab Course?
- Presentation Grant. Amount: Up to $2,015
- Jeff Clark (Geology, Lawrence University)
Clark will present a workshop at the 2011 American Association of Geographers meeting in Seattle, WA, on April 12-16, 2011, about the FaCE-funded Outdoor Classroom workshops led by Clark and Sue Swanson (Beloit College).
Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Liberal Arts Curriculum
- Collaborative Event. Grant amount: Up to $15,000
- Ádám Galambos (Economics, Lawrence University), David Gerard (Economics, Lawrence University), Jerry Gustafson, (Entrepreneurship, Beloit College), and Daniel Johnson (Economics, Colorado College)
Faculty from economics and related departments at ACM colleges will hold a two-day conference to explore how the subjects of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) can be integrated into the undergraduate economics curriculum.
Transforming Study Abroad: Creation of Short-Term International Study Courses
- Presentation Grant. Amount: Up to $1,560
- Carol Zerbe Enns (Psychology, Cornell College); Erin Davis (Sociology, Cornell College), and Joan E. Ericson (Japanese and Asian Studies, Colorado College)
With the support of a FaCE Grant, the three professors developed and taught a short-term international travel and study experience in Japan for their students. They will give a panel presentation about their project at the April 2011 AsianNETWORK conference in Oakbrook, IL.
Zen Stories for Today: A Collaborative Model of Research Mentorship
- Collaborative Research. Grant amount: Up to $6,000
- Gereon Kopf (Religion, Luther College), Benjamin Moore (Art, Luther College), and Asuka Sango (Religion, Carleton College
The project will enact a collaborative model of mentorship and will combine cutting-edge research and up-to-date digital and interactive technology to explore Zen Buddhist religious texts and facilitate learning across the liberal arts.
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